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Call Of Duty 2 (PC)

Call Of Duty 2

Information
Reviewer: Sharon Temple
Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC
Genre: First Person
UK Release: 04th Nov 2005
Article Date: 10th Nov 2005
Difficulty: Medium
Price: £29.99
Score Breakdown
Experience:
Game Play:
Graphics:
Sound:


Overall Score: 79%
Discuss this review in the Forums
Pros
  • Great Atmosphere
  • Great Graphics
    Cons
  • Multiplayer needs sorting
    Screenshots

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    The long awaited sequel developed by Infinity Ward/Activision has now hit our shelves and now we can give you an insight of what you can expect from the highly anticipated WWII first person shooter. Does it follow in the boots of its predecessors Call of Duty and the expansion United Offensive? Here's what we can tell you after getting our hands on it.

    The boots that you'll have to step into in Call of Duty 2 this time belong to Private Vassili Ivanovich Koslov, a regular in the Soviet Red Army. The game begins with the story of Vassili fighting just 20 miles from Moscow against the German blitzkrieg. There are two characters on the British side: Sergeant Davis of General Montgomery's 8th Army and Tank Commander Welsh of the British 7th Armoured Division (the famed "Desert Rats"). For the American side, you'll take the role of Corporal Bill Taylor, a member of the US Army's legendary 2nd Ranger Battalion.

    The only Call of Duty battle that you return to in Call of Duty 2 is Stalingrad, also it features the winter war where, in 1941, the German army rolled to within 20 miles of the gates of Moscow before the terrific cold and the tenacity of the Russians brought it to a halt. The new setting is North Africa, where you battle in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt between Montgomery's 8th Army and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his famous Afrika Korps.

    You can choose to become more involved in each character's story. The action begins in 1941, during the Russian campaign. After you complete the first mission, the following year, 1942, is unlocked. Then you can proceed to continue the Russian storyline that you've begun, or, alternatively, you can open up a British mission and begin. And the experience unfolds from there, with the American campaign coming in to play later in the timeline. So, as you go deeper into the game, more of the game is opened up. You can jump back to return to any existing mission whenever you want.

    Driving missions places players in a British Crusader Mark II tank in the middle of an epic desert tank battle. In this particular mission, your orders are to take on the larger and well-armed German tank division of General Rommel. Players will be in a lighter, faster squadron of tanks battling these enormous Axis machines, and the action unfolds from there. Call of Duty 2 focuses on the infantry throughout epic ground-based assaults.

    Dependent on whether you have a high performance graphics card there are two different formats (Rendering Method Preference) to play this game. For those of you who haven't got the money to spend on another new graphics card, you can enable DirectX7 within the game options. Unfortunately, you will lose a lot of the atmospheric effects that have been built into the modified Quake 3 engine for Call of Duty 2, but the game is still very playable. Another bonus that you will have running in this mode is that the weather conditions do not hinder your view, so if your preference is being a sniper then you will always get a clear shot at the enemy, if you live long enough to take the shot. For those of you that have high end graphics cards, setting DirectX9 mode enhances the full, visual experiences of Call of Duty 2. This enables you to see the true beauty of the graphics engine, revealed in its full glory. Blizzard conditions, sandstorms, rain, all obscure your view and make it very difficult to see the enemy, visibility is almost zero when the bad weather sets in.

    Call of Duty 2 has fantastic graphics and three remade maps from Call of Duty make a comeback. Carentan, Dawnville and Brecourt appear alongside 10 brand new maps. On the downside some of these are incredibly small and you will find it very hard to stay alive if the spawn points are covered.

    Following on from its predecessors, Call of Duty and United Offensive, the only new weapons that feature in multiplay are, the scoped Enfield, the trenchgun (shotgun) and the greasegun (created by the Heat of Battle modding team for United Offensive). Anyone hoping to see features implemented into Call of Duty 2 that came out with the expansion United Offensive will be sorely disappointed. Satchel charges, cookable grenades, flamethrowers, panzerfausts and vehicles do not make an appearance. Another very useful feature that United Offensive had, that hasn't been included in Call of Duty is sprint. This has got to be one of the most missed functions of the game and something you could rely on to help get you out of the path of trouble.

    Headquarters has changed considerably and at this present moment in time I reserve judgement. You are no longer awarded points for planting/defusing bombs in the objective based gametype Search & Destroy. Capture the Flag has been improved on from United Offensive, you no longer have to run along with the flagpole and be seen right across a map, the flag now drapes over your shoulders.

    The biggest blow that Infinity Ward/Activision has dealt the online CoD community is by having no Anticheat program. The commands within the game have not been locked and unfortunately the game has been left open wide to cheats and hackers. Hopefully an Anticheat program will be the first thing that Infinity Ward/Activision will be implementing for any future patch releases.

    Not enough recognition are given to these people, that spend many a long hour developing game scripts, to bring us new weapons to help bring the enemy forces to their knees, and of course new gametypes. Well they have excelled themselves again and have been working on Call of Duty 2 to bring us cookable grenades, sprint, blood, server messages and a manageable rcon for server admins. For those of you that have previously played this series of games, downloading mods from servers was a pretty painless task; no redirect has been included in the game script so far to redirect traffic. So it's down to an incredibly poor download rate of 2-3 kb a second. If this issue isn't addressed in a patch then it will probably be the end of the CoD series as we know it. The modding teams will not be able to breathe the extra life into the game so the games shelf life will become shortened immensely.

    Call of Duty was my introduction into the online world of gaming and now I am running four servers devoted to the CoD series. Infinity Ward/Activision have certainly shot themselves in the foot with this one. They will be very lucky if it can maintain online playability for as long as its predecessors in its current state. I'm afraid it's missing the wow factor and its nothing you haven't already seen apart from the awesome graphics. Some would say mutton dressed as lamb and I have to say that I agree with them. That being said, being a big fan of this series I can honestly say that Single Player is absolutely fantastic and certainly leaves you wanting more.

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